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Pakistani Censorship, by Other Means

By Kiran Nazish April 25, 2014 12:33 pmApril 25, 2014 12:33 pm

Photo

On March 21, the International New York Times front page printed in Pakistan looked like this. Everywhere else, that spot carried an edited version of a magazine article with the headline, “What Pakistan Knew About Bin Laden.”Credit Myra Iqbal for The New York Times

Raza Rumi, a prominent Pakistani journalist, narrowly escaped death on March 28 when his car was riddled with bullets in Lahore. His driver, Mustafa, a 25-year-old newlywed, was killed in the ambush, which took place as they were driving away from the set of Raza’s weekly television show on Express News. The topic that day had been how the country’s blasphemy laws are misused to persecute religious minorities in Pakistan, a regular subject for Raza.

He had been receiving threats for a while. Just two weeks earlier, he sent me an email in which he said he was looking to leave the country. “I want to move out — too many threats here. At least for a year or two,” he wrote.

At the time, it shocked me — he’d been threatened for years without being deterred. He has been called a traitor, a C.I.A. agent and an enemy of the state. There have been nationalistic blogs campaigning against him and others like him, branding them as “fascist liberals.”

Nine days after his note, his fears were realized. And he is only one of many to be attacked recently.

In Peshawar, a senior editor heading the city desk for The Express Tribune was attacked twice within seven days this month. The home of the editor, Jamshed Baghwan, was struck by a grenade on April 1 and again on April 7. On April 19, one of Pakistan’s most famous TV journalists, Hamid Mir, was shot and wounded by unknown men in Karachi.

Almost every journalist reporting on conflict within Pakistan, addressing government corruption, or investigating the actions of the military intelligence service, the ISI, has faced repeated threats. And journalists are being hurt or killed in increasing numbers, their attackers seemingly immune to prosecution. Still, most journalists do not talk about the threats they are receiving, so they seldom go on record before the attacks happen.

The usual suspect in these attacks is the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, who openly announced their war against the media in Pakistan for their lack of “impartial” reporting.

“The job of a journalist is to be fair and tell all sides of a story,” the Pakistani Taliban’s former spokesman, identified as Ehsanullah Ehsan, told the newspaper Dawn in January. He warned that the media should “mend their ways and become a neutral entity. Otherwise, the media should not feel secure. A few barriers and security escorts will not help. If we can get inside military installations, media offices should not be too much of a challenge.”

The Pakistani Taliban have a hit list of journalists they are targeting. The list was revealed for the first time in January 2012, after the Pakistani Taliban killed a veteran journalist and good friend, Mukkarram Khan Atif. They said he had portrayed them “wickedly,” and he had been telling me for months before his murder about the threats he was receiving from the Taliban and an allied group, the Haqqani network.

But the Taliban are hardly the only group attacking Pakistani journalists, and much of the violence comes without warning.

Other militant groups are involved, including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. That group is focused on attacking Shiite Muslims and other minority groups, and a senior police official in Punjab Province has said he believes that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was also behind the attack on Raza Rumi. No arrests have been made.

And the ISI, the military spy agency, has been accused in some of the most chilling abuses of reporters, including the 2011 killing of Syed Saleem Shahzad, who was slain after reporting about links between military officials and militant groups.

In such an environment it is becoming increasingly difficult for journalists to report and survive, and even the most bold have grown discouraged.

Even entire media groups have been shaken, like The Express Tribune, a popular English publication and publishing partner of The International New York Times. Its journalists or offices have been attacked eight times over the past eight months, leaving several dead.

Accordingly, Kamal Siddiqui, editor in chief of The Express Tribune, sent a startling email to all its employees in February forbidding them to write anything against militant groups or their allies, like the right-wing religious party Jamaat-e-Islami. A popular political party, Tehrik-e-Insaf, which is led by the former cricket player Imran Khan, was also included on list of not-to-offend subjects, because of the party’s opposition to any military operations against the Taliban.

Everywhere else, that spot carried an edited version of a magazine article by a Times reporter, Carlotta Gall, with the headline, “What Pakistan Knew About Bin Laden.” It was, in part, an excoriating criticism of Pakistan’s military establishment. The Express Tribune, the distributor of The International New York Times in Pakistan, removed the article as a precautionary measure.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has promised several international groups, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and the United Nations, that his government wouldl make every effort to protect journalists. But in the months since his election last May, things have actually gotten worse.

Now, the Defense Ministry is pushing the government’s media regulatory agency, Pemra, to actually ban the country’s largest television network, Geo. That move came this week in response to the station’s running scathing commentary against the military in the wake of the attack on Mr. Mir, the station’s most prominent news host. Mr. Mir insists that the ISI was behind the shooting, and his brother and some other journalists made accusations against the spy agency on Geo.

The threat of legal action against Geo is another reminder that the military is a leading voice for censorship, and that the government’s regulations allow for it, regardless of its claims to defend press freedom.

The more the censorship, the lesser the evidence, the greater the threat. And on it goes.

Kiran Nazish, a Pakistani journalist, is the 2014 Daniel Pearl fellow for The New York Times.

Correction: April 25, 2014An earlier version of this article misstated the name of Raza Rumi's driver, who was killed in an ambush. He is Mustafa, not Mumtaz.

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